Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

I’m not qualified to give advice, but I do like telling people what to do; in this case, my counsel is required. Someone needs to speak to Oteil and warn him off this dangerous path he’s set himself down: custom guitars made from silly shapes can lead to no good.

A short, biased, and incomplete history:

Bo Diddley was the progenitor of the Ridiculous Guitar, but the cigar-box is not a true Ridiculous Guitar, as RGs require that you be embarrassed for the owner; Bo pulled it off. According to Wikipedia, he came up with this shape after whacking himself in the nuts with a normal guitar. That sounds true enough.

Some will argue that Jimmy Page and his iconic double-neck belong on this list; they do not. First off, a Ridiculous Guitar can’t just be, you know: bought. It has to be designed, and preferably over-designed, and there can only be one of them; the double-neck was a production guitar, the EDS-1275. You could walk into Sam Ash on 46th and buy one: this disqualifies it. Second, Jimmy Page did not look uncool when playing the double-neck. He looked like this:

And that is the opposite of uncool.

Nor does Junior Brown and his trademark guit-steel:

While the guit-steel is certainly silly-looking, it’s 100% functional, and a Ridiculous Guitar prizes aethetics over all. Also, a man dressed that well can play anything he wants and look good doing it.

Others might bring up Rick Nielsen’s five-neck Hamer, but they would be silly simpletons: the five-neck is patently a joke, and therefore not on the cool/uncool spectrum. Even though it’s pretty darn cool:

I like how they couldn’t figure out what to do on the last neck, and just said, “Fuck it: make it fretless.”

Now, one of Rick’s many, many guitars might fit the definition of a Ridiculous Guitar. It is ludicrously shaped and custom-made and all, but I am making a ruling that Rick Nielsen’s self-awareness pushes this one into the “acceptable” category:

That’s just funny. Guy’s playing himself. Also: you see all those picks on the mic stand? Uncle Ricky’s gonna throw ’em in the crowd; folks go home with a souvenir. Cheap Trick’s awesome.

We now leave the realm of the self-aware, and when you think of someone with no self-awareness, you think of Gene Simmons. I’m surprised he’s only sported one Ridiculous Guitar throughout his career, as he’s the perfect candidate: clueless, cheesy, rich, and doesn’t give a shit how the instrument actually sounds.

That is a bass shaped like an axe; it was called the Axe Bass. Gene is imaginative. (Eagle-eyed gear nerds will note the split headstock: the neck was aluminum just like Garcia’s Travis Bean.) He had his built by a guy, but–of course–licensed out the design and his name, first to Kramer in 1980. They made 175, and if you want of of them, then get to Ebay in the next 27 hours (and bring eight grand).

Ever see that film of spiders who have been given acid trying to spin webs? (Mickey gave the spiders acid.) This makes the list of Ridiculous Guitars due to arrogance: Miles Davis played a normal trumpet like a human being, but you needed this? Suck my balls, and buy a Strat.

We’ve been beating around the bush, Enthusiasts. Everyone here knows that for the true mainline RG high, you need to use a metal syringe.

This was/is Michael Angelo:

In the 80’s, a lot of shredders shredded, but when it came to shredding, Michael Angelo was the garbage truck sized shredder that pulls up to offices and shreds tons of documents at a time. In fact, he played so many notes that he maxed out the potential of one guitar, and had to play two simultaneously. Mr. Angelo was ambidextrous, and could play both guitars at the same time. Should he? I don’t know. But: he could.

Until two guitars weren’t enough.

In addition to being a Ridiculous Guitar, Mr. Angelo’s custom whatever-that-thing-is was surprisingly good as a melee weapon, especially against a bat’leth. (Another aside for gear nerds: this monstrosity has Floyd Rose tremolos because that was the law in the 80’s.)

Mr. Angelo was also skilled at sweep picking, which was the thing after two-hand tapping. From four minutes into the first Van Halen record until the mid-80’s, you had to be able to hammer-on and pull-off and make that high-speed burbling noise to be any sort of axe-slinger. The problem with two-handed tapping is that, if done right, it sounds good; sweep picking never has that problem, as it is a distinctly unmusical musical trick. It’s just a stupidly-fast arpeggio, but if you aspired to be the next Reb Beach or Vito Bratta, you had to practice it.

And, of course: Steve Vai.

Bonus points for the heart theme, instead of just gluing two guitars together, but holy shit. I understand the point of this–making homicidally drunk teenagers holler in a basketball arena–but again: holy shit. Also: hey, Steve Vai, we heard you liked guitars so we put some guitars on your guitars etc.

But the winner is clearly…

…and here’s why: because it is, that’s why.

And now that Sammy Hagar is in the Grateful Dead, Michael Anthony will be attending cook-outs and movie nights and he will start discussing basses with Oteil, and then Oteil will show up on stage with a guitar shaped like a giant pot leaf.

4 Comments

I played at one of those pay-to-play places in 1989ish with my high school band and we happened to be on the same bill as Michael Angelo. I guess we were loosely trying to sound like the Cult and Johnny Thunders and Mr. Angelo snickered during our set.

The funny thing was we had got all of our friends to show up and had an all right crowd that quickly left when Michael Angelo took the stage, leaving only the band’s girlfriends and a few guitar students in the crowd.